In Mud and Rags
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: The greasy, shiftless masses in the Copper Coronet were a cesspool of corruption, Anomen thought. A sensible man might have considered why he visited a place he held in such contempt, but Anomen did not consider. Anomen/Charname.


Written for a prompt by warlock_enthusiast for the Baldur's Gate Gift Exchange 2019. Thanks to LateToTheParty for the beta.

—

The greasy and shiftless masses of the Copper Coronet filled the tavern with the stench of their corruption. _They are vile and impure, and I only go among them that I may serve the greater purposes of my Order_, thought Anomen.

A sensible person might have considered that being in the Copper Coronet oneself while dismissing it as a cesspool of corruption was unwise. Anomen did not consider it.

Anomen Delryn sought destiny, opportunity, a chance for advancement. He was a squire of the Noble Order of the Most Radiant Heart and would soon be a knight.

If he could only find a quest worthy of his attention ...

His contemptuous look fell on two men wearing shabby tatters. No pride in their appearance, no discipline like that the Radiant Heart provided. They jostled each other at the bar. Words were exchanged between them, getting louder.

"It was a draw - I owe you no coin, Teban!"

"Draw my right arse cheek, you puddle-feeder. One moment more and Hendak would've finished!"

The bartender made a move in the men's direction, perchance to attempt to silence them, but dared do no more. The quarrellers muttered to each other still. Anomen could tell it would soon erupt into open violence, typical of these low kind of men.

_By Helm, a chance for me even if a small one!_ Anomen marched over to the two oafs and loomed above them.

"That is enough disturbing of the peace," he instructed them. "I am an officer of the Noble Order of the Most Radiant Heart, and in the name of law and justice you will remove yourselves and your petty quarrel to the street."

They turned their vacant eyes and gaping, rotten mouths up to him.

"Get him," said the paunchier of the two. He punched Anomen in the chest and yelped when his fingers met good strong metal. Anomen reached down to lay hands on the peon's filthy collar, encrusted with dirt and worse.

Then the other menial jabbed him in the eye. Anomen raised a gauntleted hand to defend himself. He hit down, but the blow unbalanced him. The first man landed a shove that had him reeling.

Anomen was a talented fighter, though less talented than he boasted to others. He was one of the oldest and one of the strongest squires in the Order of the Radiant Heart, and generally gave a good account of himself on the training grounds.

The rules of the training grounds were very different to the rules of the Copper Coronet.

More low-class street scum rushed out of their bar stools and attacked. Anomen shoved the foremost man back into the bar. The wood splintered and dented around the man's body, but a glass bottle cracked on Anomen's neck from behind. He lowered his head and charged at the villein like an enraged bull, cracking his helmet against the man's chest.

There were far more men around Anomen than there had been a moment ago. A blow smacked his pelvis and Anomen was grateful to Helm for his codpiece, protection against dishonourable attacks. They were a treacherous mob of ill-bred curs, baying around a noble stag as if they could bring him down. He fought, iron gauntlets giving his punches weight, his opponents struggling to overwhelm his armour. He laid out a man flat on the dirty rushes that strewed the Copper Coronet floor, but felt the pain of scratches inflicted on his cheek with the broken bottle.

"Take it outside!" the bartender ordered.

Anomen felt a sharp push to his back. He whirled on the blaggard that would dare such treachery. But that only presented his back to a whole different gang of dishonourable attackers.

Hard as he fought back, Anomen was dragged to the doorway against his will and given a sharp kick. The cold air outside rushed on him. He fell heavily on wet and slimy cobblestones. His mind slowly arrived at the danger he was in.

He was Anomen Delryn, Helm's chosen priest, born of a noble mother, a knight to be! He could not fall to such a pathetic lot!

Anomen groped for his family shield and reached for the enchantment that lay on it. A field of purple light sprang up around him, forcing some of the superstitious dastards back. He chanted to his god Helm to lend him might, lend his righteous arm and fury the power of a god.

A new strength came into his right arm and he belaboured about himself with the mace bestowed on him by his Order. His weapons and signs of a god's favour shed pure bright light betwixt the muddy and befouled pools on the cobblestones.

"That's a shiny shield. I want it," someone said dryly.

A man flung his full weight into the back of Anomen's knees. Anomen clumsily stumbled, trying to shake the dishonourable cur off. Another took advantage of the opportunity to slam his fist into Anomen's cheek. Anomen's vision exploded. He lost concentration to hold his prayers in his mind. He bludgeoned a man with his shield, but a force met his back.

These men were surely corrupt beyond recognition as men!

Failure was horrifying to think of in those few frightened moments. Failure as a squire, failure as a knight, failure for all time. Anomen knew the consequences of loss here. He strove mightily to throw the hateful foe from his back, tried to beat him off on the wall. But he was swarmed, and entirely at a disadvantage.

Someone wrenched the shield from his fingers and left his hand bruised and torn. Anomen tried to pummel a man in the face, but another snatched his hand and forced his wrist back. A knee crashed into his solar plexus with immense force. Winded and in pain, his grip on his mace slackened for just a moment.

A moment was far too long in any kind of battle.

Failure was horrifying. Anomen Delryn had failed.

Anomen was hit until he couldn't get up again, lying and wheezing on the cobblestones. He couldn't breathe. Roses of pain choked his lungs and thorns bound his body. A broken bottle crashed on the back of his neck and white lightning sheeted in front of his eyes. Blood fled from him, dripping into the cold rain.

"One more blow for the fancypants pansy," a rough man said.

"Stay, Gelmer. You kill him, whole fucking Order comes down on rats like us." There was a grunt and a chuckle, as if a man's arm had to be restrained by force against its final descent. "Me, I'm a modest man. Let's get rich."

"I want his shield," someone repeated. Then Anomen's cold grip was lost entirely. The metal below his hand was wrenched away from him. The Delryn shield, worth a thousand and ten thousand more of these men. He could barely see in the blackness.

They dragged his body away from the Copper Coronet entrance, into the depths of a filthy alleyway where no one would see. The man hefting his right arm taunted him.

"How are you feeling, sir? Kiss your ring?" He traced Anomen's fingers with the point of a knife blunted from use. Anomen shouted, a cry that was stifled by a kick to his cheek. How easily this enemy could cut into that hand, cut into tendon and muscle and bone.

But Anomen only felt his ring slipped away from him. It had been a band of adulterated gold, a family heirloom. The man stamped on his hand when he was done, but only half-heartedly, with contempt and dulness.

Another man descended on his pauldrons, ripping them away from Anomen's shoulders. They were vultures ripping away the innards of a fallen dog. They took his greaves, his breastplate, his boots. They cut off his coin purse. They dragged away his helm like a trophy. Someone wrenched off his earrings. _My sister Moira gave them to me._

"Good leather, this. Good fabric, too. Worth eight coppers at least."

Knives cut open his gambeson, his tunic. Anomen was left with nothing. His father was an impoverished drunkard, his armour inherited. He had suffered countless slings and arrows already as a squire who could not even afford to keep a horse, who could barely keep his battered arms in repair. Everything these assailants stole from him he would never be able to replace. He could not be a knight with no arms to his name. The mob of men stamped Anomen's bare back further into the cobblestones for good measure, kicked his bare ribs. They trod on his face and ground his face into the mud.

One man thrust sodden dirt into his mouth. "Fine dining, sir knight? The finest Athkatla has to offer?"

Anomen moved his head, shaking and rolling his eyes, and then someone else kicked him in the head.

Blackness fell on him. He knew not how long he lay in that alley in the rain, frozen and bruised and all but naked.

He rose to painful knees, crawling on the ground like a worm. Rills of agony shot through his knees. He thought his right ankle was broken. He spat and puked out mud and blood and broken teeth. Blood filled his mouth and he could not even pray to Helm. He stared unseeing into the black night. Water from the skies cascaded over his hair and over his bare shoulders.

Then he saw the old beggar woman in the street. A flash of lightning lit up her hunched shape. She was not so much a woman but rather a bundle of old rags clinging to and limping on a length of broken wood. Her makeshift staff hit and skittered against the ground with every step she made, as if she were too old or too drunk to even control that.

Anomen had no one else to beg for help but her. He could not stand. He was not a knight but lower than the beetles of the Copper Coronet this night. He could not even tell his Order of what had happened to him for the shame of it.

"Please," he muttered through his broken mouth. "Please, help me ... "

The beggar woman would not help him. Anomen had walked past a thousand like her in the streets and thought nothing but contempt of them. Surely she would take the chance to return his old slights to her kind.

The old woman collapsed near him, as if her improvised staff could no longer support her weight. Another sheet of lightning lit up her face and showed that she was not old at all. Only young and scarred and far too thin, with desperate old wounds that crossed her face. Anomen would have fled from her in daylight hours.

"Help me," he begged again. "I was robbed, mugged, I am not ... " _Not as you_, he would have said, but for the first time felt shame in himself. He stumbled, falling down while he tried vainly to crawl.

Then he was held by a strangely strong grip. The beggar girl's arms trembled like an aspen, but there was a wiry force in them. Anomen did not know or understand it, only that it was a strangeness he would welcome on this night.

The beggar girl lowered a hand to reach inside her rags. She took an old clay vial with a jagged rim and held it to Anomen's lips. It tingled on his mouth and he felt the last drops of a precious draught of life.

She could have so easily taken it for herself. She desperately needed it for herself, Anomen could tell. The wounds that marked this woman's face could not be the worst of the wounds on body and soul. And yet she had sacrificed her last to give him his voice. Blood no longer flowed from his mouth.

"I need help," she said. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, as if it had been broken by unending screams. "Took me ... prisoner. They took my sister. I won't stop until I get her back again."

She shivered in the pouring rain, then finished her fall atop Anomen. He found himself holding this woman. She lay on his body as one dead. Rain cascaded around the both of them into the endless gutters of Athkatla.

"I am a poor knight," Anomen said. "I have nothing, not even dignity. I am a selfish fool. I must have always been a selfish fool. I have seen true generosity and nobility only tonight, from a woman I would have dismissed as the lowest of the low. Helm, forgive my pride. I crawl in the dirt before you. It must begin from humility." He touched a lock of the woman's wet hair. He brushed it gently from his face. His battered hand trailed over her temple. "Helm, let her wake and wake in peace. That is my only prayer."

He felt no answering power. His mind and body were too exhausted to grant him any focus. He had no certainty that Helm heard him or even knew of his existence. Yet the woman's breathing seemed to smooth and become even.

"I will stand with you until your sister is found, whether in this world or the next," Anomen whispered a vow to the strange sleeper. Only a tiny fragment of body heat lingered between them, faint and almost no protection from the cold. "Find the one who kept you captive and free all the other prisoners. I will see it done."

Nothing and no one answered him. The night in the deserted alley was dark as ever. The cold rain pelted down. Anomen's wounds and the woman's wounds remained in open agony on their bodies. And yet, something strange and new that was not there before had been born.


End file.
